Prez wrote on Sep 17, 2012, 11:34:Is it new sales of FTL that are putting it on the top 10 list or is it just codes being redeemed from the kickstarter drive? If that is all new sales that is just all kinds of awesome.

I don't know for sure, but this game is getting a lot of coverage by Twitch and YouTube stars, and they're causing a LOT of people to run out and buy this game. So my guess is that these are new purchases.

Someone said that on the FTL forums that at release FTL hit #1 on steam top sellers even above BL2, did anyone see that?

Incidentally this means that the kickstarter didn't saturate the market for this game. One of the things I was curious about was how many people potentially interested in this game would have bought it on the kickstarter rather than at release. Its theoretically possible for something to do well on kickstarter and not well on release if most potential customers bought it through kickstarter (the pebble KS people thought it was enough of a possibility they put limits on the backers in the last week). The answer for this game anyway, is lots more bought it on steam than through kickstarter

A few of us stopped played DayZ because of the previous alpha patch as it had some game breaking graphical bugs. Plus the fact that after playing anything for over 300 hours in a few months you might burn out on it. That gave me the opportunity to learn the base game and I'm finding I like it just as much, if not more.

It's not for everyone, if you just want an arcade shoot-em up then this isn't for you but if you have patience, can handle a steep learning curve and enjoy military sims, it's a blast.

Honestly, Arma and DayZ is the most fun I've had with a video game in over six years. Maybe longer. Wish I'd found it sooner.

I picked up the season pass for BL2 when it was $22.50. I was going to pass on it but remembered that I had a $2.50 credit on GMG from buying BL2 at $40 and getting it price matched to $37.50. My out of pocket payment was $20, total cost for BL2 + Season pass was $60.

Creston wrote on Sep 17, 2012, 10:34:If this doesn't convince publishers how awesome mods are for your game's sales, I don't know what will...

But not in the long run; I think they lose money because people will continue playing "Game #1", because the lifetime for Game #1 goes on because of mods; instead of moving onto the next title in the series "Game #2"

Things must be made to expire, or we end up in a depression again. None of which is our faults, really; it's the corporations that don't know how to manage themselves. But, now I'm rambling...

Yes, because CS was a free mod that never sold any copies on its own, and CS:S sold nothing since it was a sequel, and CS:GO sold nothing either since its a sequel of a sequel and its not even on the top 10 list here right now.

Creston wrote on Sep 17, 2012, 12:10:Obviously I'm guessing, and I did say that probably anywhere between 50 to 100K people bought Arma 2 solely for Day Z. But has it reached more than 100ish K concurrent users? The concurrent users are often the same group of people just playing every day.

I don't know if they've ever reached 100k concurrent, the "daily players" stat on their site is how many people/accounts have been active in the past 24 hours. Even at the height of zombie hysteria, when 25% of the total users were playing daily, they said they had 22,000 concurrent at peak times. (Rocket gave that number specifically in an interview at Rezzed.)

But again, daily players is only an indication of how popular it is on any given day. To get an idea of total sales, you look at total unique players, which unequivocally boomed in the month of July. If you're interested in seeing that, I managed to dig up this graph that somebody made by noting DayZ stats from its web site every day for a couple months leading up to the 1 million milestone:

I had it wrong before, daily players apparently peaked at 210k. And it's not a coincidence that happened after a steep growth throughout the Summer Sale. But it has indeed been declining ever since then, reaching as low as 88k today, seemingly the lowest point since June. I think a lot of that is people buying the game because of the hype around DayZ, then not playing very much because it's too difficult or quirky.

Interesting... I didn't know they'd gone through the effort of figuring out a "unique player" statistic. I just went by the last numbers I saw for concurrent users (three weeks or so ago), which was 100Kish, and extrapolated from there. I do think Day-Z is the kind of game where it's the same 95K people playing every day, because of how frighteningly hardcore it is. A newbie who gets ganked 5 times in the space of an hour is going to stop playing in a hurry.

However, the numbers you've quoted do seem to indicate a lot more sales than I initially thought, so I stand corrected.

Creston wrote on Sep 17, 2012, 12:10:Obviously I'm guessing, and I did say that probably anywhere between 50 to 100K people bought Arma 2 solely for Day Z. But has it reached more than 100ish K concurrent users? The concurrent users are often the same group of people just playing every day.

I don't know if they've ever reached 100k concurrent, the "daily players" stat on their site is how many people/accounts have been active in the past 24 hours. Even at the height of zombie hysteria, when 25% of the total users were playing daily, they said they had 22,000 concurrent at peak times. (Rocket gave that number specifically in an interview at Rezzed.)

But again, daily players is only an indication of how popular it is on any given day. To get an idea of total sales, you look at total unique players, which unequivocally boomed in the month of July. If you're interested in seeing that, I managed to dig up this graph that somebody made by noting DayZ stats from its web site every day for a couple months leading up to the 1 million milestone:

I had it wrong before, daily players apparently peaked at 210k. And it's not a coincidence that happened after a steep growth throughout the Summer Sale. But it has indeed been declining ever since then, reaching as low as 88k today, seemingly the lowest point since June. I think a lot of that is people buying the game because of the hype around DayZ, then not playing very much because it's too difficult or quirky.

So I presume that these STEAM numbers include those of us who bought BL2 of GMG and registered the code in STEAM.

Creston wrote on Sep 17, 2012, 11:35:Nah, I doubt that. There's around 100K people playing Day-Z every day

What? The game has sold like crazy for a few months, topping the steam list repeatedly. And that doesn't count retail. 500k to 1M units is much closer than your low-ball figure. 2M isn't out of question. And 100k online daily could fit into the 1M total sales number just fine.

jacobvandy wrote on Sep 17, 2012, 11:55:Well, I know it was less than 100k total users when it was just the new ARMA 2 mod on the scene that only the active playerbase for that knew about (April/May). After it had gone viral and exploded in popularity, they still only had 400k users, even though they already reached more than 100k daily players (June/early-July). That total users figure had DOUBLED after the Steam Summer Sale, and then surpassed a million in the first week of August. The daily player count peaked at around 120k or so, but has been declining ever so slightly since then, despite the total users growing to 1.24 million as of today.

There is no way in hell that massive spike of new players in the latter half of July was due to people who already owned the game suddenly taking an interest in playing. Maybe some had ARMA 2 and just needed to buy the expansion, like I did, but the majority were buying Combined Ops. You could argue that a good chunk of that "total players" number is actually people buying extra CD keys, whether to have a second+ character or to replace one that was banned, but those sales all look the same to the developer.

Obviously I'm guessing, and I did say that probably anywhere between 50 to 100K people bought Arma 2 solely for Day Z. But has it reached more than 100ish K concurrent users? The concurrent users are often the same group of people just playing every day.

ASeven wrote on Sep 17, 2012, 11:23:Glad it's doing so great, this game deserves all success and then more.

I gotta say, I don't understand the love this game is getting. My initial reaction to the game has been that it's the most dull, boring game I've played in quite some time. I'm really not sure what the draw is for most of the people around here.

Well, I know it was less than 100k total users when it was just the new ARMA 2 mod on the scene that only the active playerbase for that knew about (April/May). After it had gone viral and exploded in popularity, they still only had 400k users, even though they already reached more than 100k daily players (June/early-July). That total users figure had DOUBLED after the Steam Summer Sale, and then surpassed a million in the first week of August. The daily player count peaked at around 120k or so, but has been declining ever so slightly since then, despite the total users growing to 1.24 million as of today.

There is no way in hell that massive spike of new players in the latter half of July was due to people who already owned the game suddenly taking an interest in playing. Maybe some had ARMA 2 and just needed to buy the expansion, like I did, but the majority were buying Combined Ops. You could argue that a good chunk of that "total players" number is actually people buying extra CD keys, whether to have a second+ character or to replace one that was banned, but those sales all look the same to the developer.

Creston wrote on Sep 17, 2012, 10:55:That's a good point, but in the case of Arma II, sales had already basically stopped, and I'm sure they've gone and sold an additional 50-100K units just for the Mod.

Probably need to add another zero onto those figures.

Nah, I doubt that. There's around 100K people playing Day-Z every day, and I'm sure that a lot of those people already had Arma 2. The initial horde definitely already had it.

Creston

From what I understand 1 million people have played DayZ.I am not certain that many people have played Arma II.

Prez wrote on Sep 17, 2012, 11:34:Is it new sales of FTL that are putting it on the top 10 list or is it just codes being redeemed from the kickstarter drive? If that is all new sales that is just all kinds of awesome.

I've often wondered that about steam as well. Is it direct purchases? Is is serials user/redeemed?

I do hope it goes well for them. I snagged my copy yesterday, though I'm not sure when I'll get to play it.

Creston wrote on Sep 17, 2012, 10:55:That's a good point, but in the case of Arma II, sales had already basically stopped, and I'm sure they've gone and sold an additional 50-100K units just for the Mod.

Probably need to add another zero onto those figures.

Nah, I doubt that. There's around 100K people playing Day-Z every day, and I'm sure that a lot of those people already had Arma 2. The initial horde definitely already had it.

Creston wrote on Sep 17, 2012, 10:55:That's a good point, but in the case of Arma II, sales had already basically stopped, and I'm sure they've gone and sold an additional 50-100K units just for the Mod.